Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn Is, Genuinely, an Elden Ring and God of War Mash-up

ign.com:

There’s a majesty in Elden Ring that few other games can contend with. Its world is densely packed with a thousand waiting discoveries, its combat systems are richly layered, and its lore begs to be chronicled by a dozen YouTube scholars. But every now and again I can’t help but wonder what Elden Ring would be if it were not so beholden to FromSoftware’s own rules. What if it had the sense of cinematic spectacle that fuels Sony’s blockbusters? A story-rich narrative with the flashy, ability-augmented combat of God of War? The answer, it seems, may well be held in Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn.

At Gamescom 2022 I sat down with a couple of developers from A44, the New Zealand-based developer behind Ashen, to watch them play around 30 minutes of Flintlock. They explained that their new Soulslike RPG, set in a fantasy world of ancient magic and blackpowder guns, is designed to sit somewhere between Elden Ring and God of War, taking the challenge and discovery of the former and combining it with the narrative-focused, glossy presentation of the latter.

This approach is clear to see in the demo’s boss battle, which sees protagonist Nor Vanek face off against the imposing God of Knowledge, a towering spirit encased in golden plates of triangular armour. As the Soulslike genre dictates, the boss has an inflated health bar, deals huge damage with telegraphed attacks, and becomes more fearsome in its second phase. The initial steps to overcome all this follows the Dark Souls playbook; a well-timed dodge roll is followed by a few aggressive axe strikes, and then a patient wait for an attack that can be parried. But it’s in the parry that Flintlock’s God of War influences begin to show through; Nor knocks the God to its knees and the